In this paper, I use two current successful video games to illustrate advances in narrative in game design and compare their style to that of two theatrical models from the past.
We present a study of user performance in a First Person Shooter game comparing a prototype trackball controller, a standard game controller, and a keyboard and mouse. The prototype controller replaces the right analog stick of a standard game controller (used for pointing and camera control) with a trackball. To measure the performance of the three input devices, participants played two games. Penguin Hunt measured the number of target hits per minute, which was 28.1 with the keyboard and mouse, 22.9 with the trackball controller, and 21.7 with the standard controller. Modern Warfare measured average completion times, which were 26.8 s with the keyboard and mouse, 31.8 s with the trackball controller and 35.5 s with the standard controller. The trackball controller represents a 5.5% target hits increase over the standard controller in Penguin Hunt, and a 10.4% speed-up in trial completion time in Modern Warfare.
This paper discusses the experiences of the three authors during their alternate reality game (ARG) session at the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Conference. Taking the conference theme " Diversifying Participation " literally, the aim of this ARG event was to advance conference learning to a new level of involvement by employing a problem-solving and experiential method of presenting. Our intent was for attendees to collectively experience how participatory digital media learning works. Within the context of the ARG, we transformed the traditional conference room setting into an immersive ludic environment closely corresponding to the social media preferences of today's youth [4, 5, 6, 9]. We argue that ARGs exhibit pedagogically desirable qualities that are ideally suitable for learning purposes, even though their dynamic and unpredictable aesthetics require specific preparation beforehand and intense follow-up thereafter. In planning an ARG for the novel and unexpected context of an academic conference, our team engaged in a learning process that touches upon the biases inherent within the juxtaposition of play and academia [1, 12, 14]. We critically examine these experiences using a self-reflexive method and offer specific guidance for employing ARGs in diverse contexts for educative purposes.
In this paper we describe TableTalk Poker, an online social gaming environment designed for seniors. In addition to text chat among all the players, the system supports voice conversations between each player and a non-playing partner, who may assume various roles such as peer, mentor, or learner. This paper reports on our user-centred design process, which included significant field work; the resulting system design; and the results of preliminary testing. We found that allowing seniors' participation by assuming various roles improves game accessibility and aids learning. Our pilot subjects enjoy this playing format and the opportunities for conversation that it provides.
The number of 'serious games' designed to improve abilities such as cognition, physical fitness, or language proficiency is growing faster than scientific validation of claims being made by the vendors of such games. This is partly because validation is a costly and difficult process typically relying upon in-person experimental protocols. We propose an alternative --- a framework for conducting validation studies online --- and present the motivation, core principles and challenges in building such a system.
Designing an end-user development environment seems to require making a trade-off between ease of use and expressiveness. GameSoup is an online game development platform that attempts to satisfy these two design requirements by splitting development into two distinct stages. One stage requires programming experience and is highly expressive; the other stage is very easy to use.
This paper introduces a novel approach to integrating various psychosocial models to facilitate the construction of flexible, expressive, and believable non player characters for modern video games. Instead of forcing game designers and developers to choose from a multitude of possible models for personality, emotion, and so on, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, our approach enables the use of multiple models simultaneously, either partially or in their entirety. In doing so, we can provide considerable flexibility and customizability in character design, leading to richer and more varied characters in video games. Based on our approach, a prototype run-time system has been developed, using our earlier work in emergent characters as a foundation. To further support our approach in the creation of characters, tools have also been created to construct psychosocial models, as well as the characters based on these models. These prototypes have been evaluated and shown through experimentation to produce very positive results, and have great promise for continued work in the future.
In this paper, we present work in progress on distributed mobile audio games. We outline some of our areas of exploration along with how these types of games may be particularly useful in educational environments that require training in, for example, mixing, spatial sound and orchestration.
Game sketching is used to identify enjoyable designs for digital games without the expense of fully implementing them. We present Raptor, a novel tool for sketching games. Raptor shows how table-top interaction can effectively support the ideation phase of game design by enabling collaboration in the design and testing process. Raptor heavily relies on simple gesture-based interaction, mixed-reality interaction involving physical props and digital artifacts, Wizard-of-Oz demonstration gameplay sketching, and fluid change of roles between designer and tester. An evaluation of Raptor using seven groups of three people showed that a sketching tool based on a tabletop computer indeed supports collaborative game sketching better than a more traditional PC-based tool.
Medical imaging techniques such as Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that produce three-dimensional views of the body have become commonplace. In this paper we provide a preliminary overview of an MRI stereoscopic visualization system that we have recently begun developing. Stereoscopic visualization augmented with auditory cues (sonification) and a Nintendo Wii remote controller ("Wiimote") allows the user to easily manipulate the visualization.
Virtual worlds differ from other online game services by providing features and services that allow users to create their own unique graphical 3D content to dynamically modify the virtual world. These features place significant demands on servers, clients, and the network. As virtual worlds evolve to support more users, interactions and higher-resolution graphics these demands will continue to increase. This paper describes an experimental implementation of a user-generated content download/cache management technique. This technique was tested against a commercial virtual world service and demonstrated effective in reducing network load without introducing additional inefficiencies. This work has shown it is possible to reduce the network demands of user-generated content on virtual world services entirely through a more efficient loading scheme without increasing the speed of graphical or network processing hardware or bandwidth.
As an emerging medium and industry, computer games received a lot of attention from scholars across a variety of disciplines. The realistic 3D graphics, intelligent non-player characters (NPC) and fascinating game play have made a great impact on user experience in the entertainment domain, e-Learning and other gaming related applications. In this paper, we investigate the game from another perspective - how the game can be affected by the player's real-time experience, such as emotion and gesture. A generic goal oriented software agent platform is proposed to automatically refine the animation, the NPC's personality and emotions, and the game story by learning from the player's realtime feedback from the emotion analyzing and gesture tracking modules. Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) and data mining techniques are used to infer the mutual influences between the player's real world experience and the contents of the game. The adaptation of game to the player's real-time reactions will bring dynamism into the player's game experience. The proposed agent platform has been integrated with several commercial game engines including Unreal Engine 3, and Torque, etc.
Augmented Reality (AR) Games have been investigated for several years, but have only been deployed by the research community and in special installations. However, the advent of inexpensive phones and PDAs with sophisticated sensor and graphics hardware allows AR games to reach a much broader audience. For developers to quickly deploy AR games, they will need tools to abstract much of the difficult work away. We investigate on such tool, Layar, a geotagging system, in this paper. While no games have been published using Layar to date, it provides a rich set of AR tagging tools. We explore the possible scope of games designed with Layar, and present an implementation. Recommendations for AR toolkit designers are presented in the discussion.
In this paper, we introduce and discuss a theoretical framework that can be used for designing and understanding game experiences in their situated contexts. The framework illustrates the fact that the design process for casual games, which values acceptability, accessibility, simplicity, and flexibility in game design, has become relevant for more than just casual games. The framework specifically addresses such changes within digital games culture, changes that have been embodied in phenomena such as casual and social games.
Generating effective immersive environments involves providing the synchronized and timely presentation of a range of different perceptual cues. This paper describes the development of a virtual reality system that uses both visual and physical motion cues to simulate a Jet Ski. The paper provides details on the generation of physical and visual motion cues using a stereo HMD and a physical motion platform.
This contribution presents an easy to implement 3D tracking approach that works with a single standard webcam. We describe the algorithm and show that it is well suited for being used as an intuitive interaction method in 3D video games. The algorithm can detect and distinguish multiple objects in real-time and obtain their orientation and position relative to the camera. The trackable objects are equipped with planar patterns of five visual markers. By tracking (stereo) glasses worn by the user and adjusting the in-game camera's viewing frustum accordingly, the well-known immersive "screen as a window" effect can be achieved, even without the use of any special tracking equipment.
This paper examines game design for multi-touch enabled systems, focusing on tabletop computers that are exposed to the public. We first elaborate on the requirements for ad-hoc collaborative multi-touch gameplay. As our main contribution, we identified particular gameplay aspects and formalized them in reference to formal elements of gameplay: The game mechanics should support different scopes of involvement and make use of spatial conflicts that relate to the player resources. The game should further offer outcomes that can be achieved in continuous ad-hoc group gameplay. Based on these criteria, we developed the multi-touch game Magic Garden. The case shows, how the defined elements support game creation for ad-hoc collaborative multi-touch play. As a final result, we propose to combine multiple separate mini-games in a mixed scenario as a general approach for the creation of multi-touch games for large public displays.
Traditional teaching-and-learning environments often do not address the learning needs of today's "millennial" generation of students who prefer team-work, experiential activities, structure and the use of technology. Serious games leverage the power of computer games to captivate and engage players for a specific purpose such as to develop new knowledge or skills while providing a learner-centered approach to learning which have shown to be effective, particularly with today's generation of students. This paper describes an ongoing project that will see the development and evaluation serious game to facilitate learning of the concepts related to Amplitude Modulation (AM) for undergraduate Electronics Engineering curriculums allowing electronic engineering students to focus on and develop an understanding of the fundamental AM process.
Producing new ideas may feel like an easy and automated task or even something mysterious, as ideas seem to come out of nothing, sometimes in weird situations, and designers rarely run out of them. Based on the interviews of 23 Finnish game designers and game professionals responsible for new ideas from 8 different companies, it is clear that ideas do not come about by accident, Game designers have different means and ways of affecting the process as well as different views on what a game idea is and what role game ideas have within the production process. In this paper, I will present the findings of the aforementioned interview study and discuss the implications of this study for the development of systematic approaches to game idea generation.
In this case study, we document the development and user-testing of Epidemic: Self-care for Crisis, an online educational resource that invites users (aged 14--20) to develop game-based knowledge and practices around prevention, self-care and (mis)information in the face of contagious diseases -- a timely project, given the ongoing anxieties, and false (and not so false) alarms, over SARS, Avian Flu, and H1N1. Contagion, the forerunner to Epidemic, mobilized the conventions and mechanics of single-player adventure games to engage players 'experientially' with health-and disease-related understandings: we configured the same basic self-care information as "narrative knowledge" [27] intended to mobilize players' attention and intelligence voluntarily, using narrative as a rhetorical strategy. We were using narrative's traditional, paradigmatic function within literate cultural forms of interpellation---stories of playful, pleasurable persuasion designed to engage players, Epidemic takes a decidedly different tack towards delivering the same educational content. Reconfiguring digital play within social networking conventions affords us a design-based platform for fundamental theory development in game-based learning. Epidemic's modular, Flash and XML-based design allows for accessible and straightforward creation and editing of educational 'content', both textual and visual: players can generate and publish their own virus-like avatars, stop-motion animations, and disease-related public service announcements. Some interesting divergences in play-based education on community health/self care, between interactive narrative and social-networking configurations for ludic knowledge representation, appear noteworthy. Our user-testing, we argue, signifies a further innovation in the field of educational game design, leaving behind the clichéd concern over 'what did you learn today' in favor of focusing on when and how laughter, engagement and attention are most at work. Taken together, these innovations instantiate an approach to digitally-mediated learning that construes and practices assessment differently than in traditional education (and in educational technology design), which are more concerned with propositionally identifiable learning outcomes. In the case of Epidemic, however, we are more concerned with how play-based learning design can best support the cultivation of responsible and critically-informed attitudes towards public health.
